Monthly Archives: February 2015

Chang was the next to go, of old age, thankfully. He died alone in the hallway of the Shee Ark, but I think he preferred it this way. He didn’t seem to care for large groups and tended to interact with just a handful of norns.

Soon, everyone became lethargic again and didn’t seem interested in traveling to find toys or food. Instead a handful of them just stuck to their new groups and hardly even looked at the doors that lead out of the terrariums.

I did have good news, though. With my new feeding routine, no one was hungry and there were some first pregnancies happening. Fidget had just become a mother and I hoped Aster and Stain would soon become parents as well. The older norns in particular didn’t seem driven to move, but they still ate when I brought them goodies.

Spike was the next to pass away. Once he did pass away, two eggs hatched. Oops! The Egg Finder crashed. I exported the two babies and set them aside for later. Technically, this put the baby count up to 124 since this issue happened before.

I’ll not reveal the parents now, so you’ll just have to wait to find out later. 🙂

Naturally, I had to find a way to store the other eggs to prevent any more accidents like these. Of course, a few eggs hatched anyway, but I wa able to export those babies and then store the rest of the eggs in Ultimate Life Norns for laying and hatching later.

I always thought it was strange that I couldn’t get my creatures to eat carrots and potatoes. I knew that the items were classified as “root” so I opened up the genetics kit and found that all of my creatures lacked genes that encouraged them to eat other types of foods like leaves, seeds and roots. They only really knew to eat food and fruit and had a third, vague instinct to “eat” when they were hungry, which might explain why creatures were always putting things in their mouths. I also found that they lacked an instinct to drink water when thirst and instincts to push dispensers when hungry, so I added those to their genes as well and out came these guys.

I haven’t gotten any feedback from more experienced Creatures 2 players so I decided to give them another go myself and document my experience. Later, if I like this genome, I might expand on it or introduce more creatures with different sprites using this same genome. We’ll see. I’m not exactly a talented or experienced gengineer.

Anyway, first to join us is Isabelle. She learned all of her verbs very quickly and started to learn about things like food and toys very quickly.

She also kept trying to eat the doozers, but she didn’t have much luck. I eventually lured her to the lower level where the emotions and intensity computer was. I dropped some dispensers near her.

Next to join us is Katie. She is just as inquisitive as her clone Isabelle and set out to do many of the same things. Eat my hand, eat critters, etc. She didn’t take long to learn her verbs either and I hoped I’d get to introduce the ladies to each other soon.

As Katie stomped around the nursery, generally ignoring the computers, I checked on Isabelle, who complained that she was tired. I eventually used the doozers until I thought that the creatures had learned all the nouns that they could and then introduced our first boy.

This is Ernest. He dashed past the computer, dispensers and the girls before getting stuck in the corner of the cave. Between the two girls, computers and the doozers, Ernest was starting to get the hang of language.

I could hardly get him to hold still, though and had a hard time answering his questions with the two slap and tickle happy girls around.

Finally, as if things weren’t complicated enough, I decided to introduce the last baby, Dodger. He actually stayed close to the computer and learned a handful of words.

With the computers looping automatically, the other norns constantly chatting and the doozers being pushed all the time, I wasn’t worried about his education. I added another dispenser and sat back and watched.

Peony was nearly an hour old now and she was the youngest norn! Since nothing bad had happened in a while, I saw fit to add another baby to our group.

Meet Mallory, the newest girl to join us. She’s the daugher of Bobby and Babs. When I looked at her actual birthday, I was a little stunned. January 3rd! Wow. I need to come here more often! I have to say, though. She is very easy to teach and very eager to learn. She’d actually pressed all the encyclopedias by herself. After some food, she started to wander out into the garden herself.

Now, everyone else was on the island and it seemed many of them only wanted to bother poor Danny! He just wanted to sleep but Bobby always wanted to say hello and Cassy kept harassing him for another egg. The poor guy spent most of his time ignoring the other norns and trying to sleep, though. Danny eventually tried to make his escape on the boat but the two girls ended up following him anyway. I guess something about being a good sleeper made him attractive to them, though Peony was still too young to breed.

When I checked on her, Mallory was back in the house, complaining that she felt hot. Standing next to a lit stove can do that, but I guess little Mallory didn’t know any better.

I tried to lure her out of the house but my success was limited. The only thing that finally drew her out was the spinning top toy just outside. She then started picking and eating carrots and I thought the heat might wear off for her.

Cassy meanwhile was forgetting to eat again. What confused me a little is that she wasn’t even busy trying to breed! She was just looking at the lift and some parsnips then back at the lift again. She eventually took a nap and I decided to try feeding her when she was done.

I decided to try feeding Danny but, just as with Cassy, I had limited success. Perhaps I would just have to try again later.

With so many creatures on hand and all of the crowding together, I decided to take a new measure. I froze them all with Ctrl+7 and moved them into the different living areas, one by one by hand. Once everyone was evenly spread out between the Meso, Norn Terrarium, Jungle Terrarium and Desert, they were free to roam again.

Immediately, things were quieter, and it was a nice change from everyone talking about how much they liked or disliked X norn or Y norn. My relief was cut short by a death notification, however. Olga had passed away due to old age. She at least had Peri to keep her company in her final moments and I had to add a new baby to the pool soon.

But then, something heart wrenching happened. Mikaela died! I removed bacteria from the world, so my best guess is that she died of starvation. One problem with having such a huge population is the tremendous distraction that other norns can provide. A lack of food wasn’t the issue this time – I showered each group with food and added new food with Garden Box to each Terrarium. Poor dear.

I changed my tactic. Instead of just adding food, I would also say “eat seed” or “eat food” to encourage them to eat. It seemed to work and there seemed to be a small crowd forming in the desert when I made my rounds to feed everyone. I was also happy to see Fidget eating (her tail is just visible above) since she had such a sad life in the event.

It soon came time to add another baby and this time, Aster would join us. When I imported her, I tried telling her to eat seed and she started to eat everything that I put down in front of her. What an appetite!

Lemons, carrots and seeds all disappeared in just a matter of seconds before she went off in search of norns, toys or more food. Who knows what was going through her mind after that feast.

I brought her a toy and the quacking from the toy didn’t stop for a long time.

Next to pass away was Adelphos. If I remember right, he was the first male to enter this world. Lin and Logic were nearby to keep him company.

He, like most of the other norns, will be survived by many, many eggs. I only had to wait a few moments after Adelphos’ passing before I had to introduce the next and final baby for this run. Who would it be?

Well, if you were taking notes (and trust me, I wasn’t), you might know that it’s Stain, one of the winners of the event.

I always really liked his appearance and was happy to see he’d finally join us.

With the final baby introduced to the world, I could not only put away Norn Statistics, but I could also focus on what the norns were doing and on feeding them. Not to say that it was hard before but remember that Drake and Mikaela both passed away and not due to old age. As much as it pained me, it was ultimately up to me to make sure that didn’t happen. Still, with 117 eggs and counting, plus the vastly improved health of all the norns in the world, I was still willing to call this consolation run a success. Now to wait for this group to finish its cycle so I could hatch all those eggs!